Record olive harvest expected

Olive production will be up significantly. | Antoni Martí

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterSoller29/09/2017 00:00

The Oliva de Mallorca DO (designation of origin) regulatory council made a presentation on Wednesday about the prospects for the olive harvest: this is for table olives rather than for the making of olive oil. The president of the DO, Miquel Gual, said that farmers and the cooperative are suggesting there will be 100 tonnes, the highest amount since the DO started in 2013.

The 2016-2017 campaign was poor. Production didn't even reach seven tonnes, while the year before it was 35 tonnes. The drought had a significant impact. The weather conditions for this year have been much better, and so expectations for olive picking are that much greater.

There are now more farmers (74) and more trees (over 58,000) contributing to the DO, and Gual stressed the fact that this increase is partly due to there being more young farmers. He expects the number to rise and to see a reactivation of olive groves in the Tramuntana mountains that are currently not productive.

The DO only accepts trees of the Majorcan variety that are at least 75 years old, many of which are in areas where access can be quite difficult. For this reason, there are additional costs of production. Gual observed that there has been no case of xylella bacterium infection in Tramuntana olive groves but that the DO is prepared if there is.